Vladius

Spartacus01 said:

Vladius said:

Superweapon VII said:

*yawn*

Our concept of hell doesn’t have biblical origins

yawn yeah it does

Can you elaborate?

I’m not going to watch that video but at the very least the title is misleading. Hell comes up in the bible as either Sheol/Hades like the Greek concept as a place for dead spirits, or Gehenna, which is named after a valley in Israel and symbolizes fiery torment and burning. It’s worth noting for all the people here who are fans of sanitized 21st century-friendly hippie Jesus that Christ talks more about hell (Gehenna) than anyone else in the bible.

Of course different Christians have different interpretations of how all this works, who goes to hell, how long it lasts, what the nature of it is, what the difference between Sheol and Gehenna is, etc. but it’s clearly right there in the text. The imagery and the concept of a place of punishment is obviously biblical.

Superweapon VII said:

*yawn*

Our concept of hell doesn’t have biblical origins

yawn yeah it does

DuracellEnergizer said:

I’m not a Gnostic. I find its dualism problematic, actually. But I can still appreciate it. The Old Testament’s portrayal of God isn’t 100% ugly, but it still ascribes much ugliness to God. The Gnostics rightly recognized that ugliness as antithetical to the overall message of Jesus and rejected it; they just went a little too far.

Jesus is the Old Testament God

Darth_Detritus said:

[screams in the void said:]
I have a new order to recommend: the Spoiler Order, one that preserves the famous “twists” of the franchise for longer than either the Release Order or the Machete Order.

I am curious to hear others opinions on this…

I watched a YouTube video recently that made a good case for watching chronological vs release order. Almost everyone knows of the famous “I am your father” line at this point, even non-fans, which works against the biggest reason to suggest release order.

It was a real treat watching it with someone who didn’t know the line see it for the first time.

But even if you know the twist it’s still better to do release order in my opinion. Going from Return of the Jedi to Phantom Menace is much less jarring in terms of technology and visual aesthetic compared to going from Revenge of the Sith to Star Wars. The prequels also have a lot of in-jokes, callbacks, and “coming full circle” moments that don’t mean anything unless you’re already familiar with the original trilogy. That’s how it works even if you’re just listening to the music, there’s a lot of leitmotifs that are references to themes that were already developed elsewhere.

Yeah I think the strength of the show was how it handled everyday life for people in the setting and not necessarily the grandiose speeches. What they should take away from it is:
*More subtle writing that takes a little bit more audience inference and has some mystery to it without spelling everything out.

*More of an attempt to cover areas in the setting that don’t fall into the typical mold WITHOUT resorting to a pastiche of some other genre. Not “let’s have a Godzilla episode” or “let’s have an homage to this specific western/samurai movie”, but “let’s show this guy eating cereal with his nosy mom and worrying about his career.” It’s difficult to do without making it too mundane and boring, and I think they failed at it hard when they tried to do something similar in Mandalorian season 3 because it was so incongruous with everything else.

*Practical effects, props, and especially sets with a priority for shooting on location where possible. It’s okay and often better to re-use the same sets several times as you get familiar with the place.

*More attention paid to casting. The existing characters (Cassian, Saw, Mon Mothma, etc.) had already been cast elsewhere but all the new people fit their roles flawlessly. Even minor characters were more memorable because of the casting.

I think they might take the wrong lessons away, like feeling an obligation to a “dark and gritty” tone, morally gray characters and actions, or focusing even further on the already saturated period between episodes 3 and 4.

So I tried out watching Rogue One immediately after the show. I know I said it improves it before and it does, but it had strange results.

The first half of Rogue One, which I think is weak, is greatly improved. Knowing Cassian, K2, Saw, Krennic, etc. helps it flow very naturally and helps you to care a lot more about what’s going on. Same with the rebels generally. Since the pace of the show is so slow, Rogue One, which normally feels slow early on, feels much faster by comparison. Almost too fast. Cassian almost rises to the level of secondary protagonist because you know him so well by this point. When he decides not to snipe Galen Erso it’s much more meaningful. You know his modus operandi under Luthen was to gun down anyone who could potentially be a problem, and you see that at the beginning of the movie with his contact on Kafrene. The theme toward the end of the show where he starts to embrace the Force a little bit carries through pretty well.

The part where he tells Chirrut that “this is a first for me” when he’s in Saw’s jail is hilarious because they either forgot about it or he’s lying, given that there’s an entire arc in the show about him escaping a hell prison.

There’s also an interesting dynamic with Krennic’s character. We saw him as the intimidating upper manager figure in the show, but when we see him next to Tarkin and Vader he’s in the junior leagues. There’s a feeling that everything has gone up a level and there’s a natural progression from spies running around to open conventional war.

Then the other half of the movie, which people generally see as much stronger because it has most of the action and the big battle, actually gets weaker. The idea that Jyn steps up and becomes a leader figure right away looks even more absurd because we’ve just seen how paranoid and distrustful the rebel command is and how long it’s taken them to trust Cassian. There’s some of that discussion in the council with some of the worst senators ever but it’s still odd. Then they naturally defer to her to give an inspirational speech to the soldiers on the landing craft, when Melshi is clearly their real leader. The way she suddenly becomes the most important figure in the universe with the ability to single-handedly take out a dozen stormtroopers in melee comes across as more Mary Sue-ish next to the more grounded feeling of the show where everyone receives a lot more development. Baze and Chirrut similarly feel a little more out of place.

The ending feels even more abrupt. There’s no real breather where you take in that everyone died, it just slams right into CGI Leia and credits with little explanation. This was more understandable when this was just a fan film prequel for the original movie but now it feels almost insulting, for lack of a better word.

There were some subplots that didn’t end up going anywhere. Some of it is a result of the season compression but other stuff I think they just didn’t know what to do with. The big ones are:
*Mon Mothma, her family, and anything to do with the wedding. The only major thing that affects anything else is Luthen taking out Tay Kolma. The rest is all fluff. Mon already made the “sacrifice” of marrying off her daughter in season 1, we don’t need to see it play out.
*Bail Organa staying on Coruscant. Doesn’t matter at all, he’s teleported to Yavin after the timeskip.
*Wilmon going with Saw to steal special fuel and inhale it for some reason. It seems like it’s going to lead to another bigger mission and like he’s going to join Saw’s faction, and this was a rite of passage. But the next time we see him he’s with the main rebel/Luthen group like nothing happened.
*Similarly it seems like Bix is going to start doing missions in the middle and she’ll have a Bonnie and Clyde thing with Cassian but really they were just taking revenge on the torturer guy. Her worries about killing the innocent soldier guy on their last mission, and her drug problems, don’t go anywhere either. Although it is nice that she’s happy at the end and you can say that that was the point all along.
*On a related note there’s the setup where Lonni and the other ISB guy are going to supervise the other Imperial intelligence branch working with the torturer and making sure they don’t screw it up, which could have been entertaining. But that’s dropped when he’s killed right away. Maybe that was to make it more shocking when Bix takes him out? Who knows.

Overall I still thought it was satisfying and well done and the time skips were useful for getting to the good parts quicker.

I don’t even know what to call this

Star Wars
Empire Strikes Back
Return of the Jedi
Phantom Menace
Revenge of the Sith

Picking up K2 off the ground makes perfect sense. Those droids are extremely deadly and almost impervious to blaster fire. They don’t have any counter to it. If Cassian is already hopping on a truck and it’s right there, why wouldn’t you take it back? You would want to study it for weaknesses, reverse engineer it, or use it. He stole an experimental TIE interceptor at the beginning of the season for the same reason.

This show actually does for Rogue One what a lot of people say the Filoni show does for the prequels. Rogue One is a better movie as the Serenity to Andor’s Firefly than it is as a paint by numbers steal the Death Star plans prequel movie.

KumoNin said:

This seems to be an unpopular opinion among the American monomyth enjoyers, but

I don’t think Luthen and Kleya “have” to die. I don’t think characters that we don’t see in the OT have to die. I don’t think that characters who have done questionable things for the rebellion don’t get to experience and participate in rebuilding the new, better world, and heal together with the more pure of heart characters. Luthen has been cut out of the chain of command, and there’s no reason he can’t have continued to be a spy on Coruscant or something through the war. The rebel life he leads is one of the riskiest of all the people in the rebellion, but it would definitely be a nice subversion of the cowboy trope for the guy who’s sacrificing everything for “a sunrise he knows he will never see” to actually be one of the few OGs that do get to see that sunrise in the end.

As for Dedra, I think she finds out what they’re really doing with those rocks, and I don’t know what’s going to happen, but probably the obvious thing would be for her to eventually be posted on the Death Star, right?

Anyway, I agree with all the praises of the show’s nuanced writing and music and stuff, obviously. There is room for different genres in Star Wars, but I do miss this level of subtlety in other shows (namely whenever Filoni does a politics-related plot or whenever anyone but Zahn writes Thrawn…)

Completely agree.

timdiggerm said:

The press release page linked at the top is pretty interesting. Most of those projects have actually happened. Rogue Squadron never got out of development hell, the Taika Waititi thing seems dead too, Rangers got cancelled for understandable reasons, and then there’s A Droid Story (???). But the rest! It all happened!

They also snuck Lando in there, which didn’t happen

I don’t mind all the different title cards and such, but I really hate the Disney intro on everything where it flashes blue and red on all the helmets/droid faces. I think it’s tacky.

Channel72 said:

I think Star Dates contain meta-information about the actual episode or season number, IIRC. But I doubt they were ever used consistently. In reality, an actual inter-stellar calendar system would have to somehow compensate for the bizarre, counter-intuitive fact about our Universe that “now” is a subjective concept entirely dependent on the location and speed of an observer.

Anyway, yeah the Battle of Endor makes more sense logically as a starting point for the new calendar. From an in-Universe perspective, I don’t know when the new dating system officially began. Was it established immediately after the Battle of Yavin (perhaps partially as a propaganda tool for the Rebellion) or did they think of it later and then retroactively apply it backwards to begin at Yavin? Who knows, I doubt any canonical source addresses the issue. In any case, real world calendars are often conceived of after the fact and then applied retroactively to some past duration of time. Perhaps in retrospect, the Rebels came to believe that the Battle of Yavin was like a “sacred turning point” in their favored historical narrative, and so they chose that as “Year 0”.

Obviously, the real world explanation is that Star Wars 1977 is where it all began. I’ve also seen newer timelines from official Disney material that use Episode 7 and the destruction of Starkiller base as the start of a new dating system or reference point. (bleh…) It’s like the Disney “regime” took some cues from actual dictators and rewrote (fictional) history to center around a new favored cult of personality.

Yeah I think this is correct. They either applied it retroactively or they jumped the gun and decided it was the most important thing ever before they knew an even bigger victory was a few years away.

Yeah after Return of the Jedi I think general audiences were done with it. There wasn’t anything new coming out in theaters and the hype died down. Among true fans the RPG and the Thrawn trilogy started a small revival that endured through books, comics, and video games.

However I don’t think the prequels were ever “cool” at the time. People watched them because they were big budget spectacle and because of the Star Wars name, but I remember that they were not taken seriously. Jar Jar, kid Anakin, then teen Anakin in AotC were heavily mocked. So was the dialogue in all three.

Certain aspects like Darth Maul were definitely cool and had an outsized influence in merchandise. The EU continued booming with books, comics, and video games, but those were still largely limited to true fans and gamers.

I still don’t think it’s necessarily “cool” now. It’s more that it just lingers everywhere and has merchandise everywhere. There’s nothing particularly youthful about it; the same boomers that post minion memes on facebook also post/buy Baby Yoda stuff. There will probably never be the same level of hype there was during 1977.

oojason said:

Vladius said:

I thought everything was really tastefully done including the one scene with Bix, except for the over the top references to undocumented illegal alien farm workers. I get that that kind of thing could happen because the Empire is full of oppressive busybodies who love getting people in trouble for paperwork, but I think the implication that that’s an analogous situation to the US is kind of crass.

I don’t believe it is analogous situation just with the US - many of us in UK & Europe are well aware of what has been taking place in relation to long reliance of undocumented food workers (in the fields / and in restaurants / and in effect the larger ‘gig’ economy; that authorities have previously acknowledged and turned a blind eye to in the main - and yet also eager to clamp down on a whim). In the UK’s case, all the way back to Brexit and the resulting fallout from that. I can’t speak for other areas around the world - I don’t know enough about that; though I wouldn’t be surprised if people across the planet the planet… recognise what is going on in the farm field scenes… and correlate with their own similar issues in relation to the treatment of undocumented workers or refugees simply looking for safe shelter, work, and place to start a new life - and looking to integrate and contribute to that place.
 

Andor filmed from November 2022 to February 2024 (with gaps for the strikes) - before the US election in November 2024; and the resulting the re-election of convicted felon and rapist ‘Orange Man’ who you refer to in a later post.

Now, if the actor who played the Imperial officer who attempted to rape Bix had weird combed-over ginger hair and couldn’t complete his dialogue without including outrageous falsehoods or trailing off into incoherence in an attempt to deflect away from answering questions or his actions… we all may have been having a different conversation. 👍
 

Credit to everyone involved in the handling of the scene with Bix; not just the tone, content and writing - but also the stunt-work, editing and both the actors. The actor/stuntman who played the Imperial officer really hit it out of the park in adding to the realism of the scene (plus him being dazed and concussed - losing control of his faculties and bouncing off the scenery like that really added to it). Adria Arjona was superb - which is no surprise given the quality of her performances throughout the show (like so many other top talents in this series).

It’s still not a situation that’s analogous. A galaxy with countless inhabitable planets and high amounts of automation is much different from the real world in terms of what that would mean for border security and the economics of farming.

My main issue with it is that the Empire controls both whichever planet they came from, and the farm planet. Obviously they don’t want to let slip that they’re from Ferrix (which is a different problem than someone entering the US from Mexico, for instance) but it doesn’t really matter what planet they’re from because the Empire controls the whole galaxy. If they’re legally imperial citizens then they would hypothetically be able to go to any planet available to the public. If someone wants to voluntarily go work on a farm on a dedicated farm planet, go ahead, knock your socks off. It would be like someone moving between states in the US or cities in the UK or what have you. It’s completely different from citizens of other countries crossing over the borders of the US or UK.

The main reason the Empire would implement visas and such would be for monitoring purposes. They want to know who’s going where and keep track of them in case some of them are criminals or rebels. While this is one aspect of immigration law (a legitimate one) it doesn’t make sense to drag the farming labor stuff into it.

We have to import people from other planets because the lazy natives don’t want to do the work! Okay, what natives? It’s completely empty except for the people you already brought here from other planets. There’s no language barrier. There’s no ethnic issues. There’s no species issues since they’re all pretty much human. There’s not really any hugely significant cultural differences because the galaxy is already highly interconnected through space travel. There’s no state infrastructure or healthcare services they’re taking up that they wouldn’t be taking up somewhere else in the same Empire.

This is why it feels so jarring and out of place. They’re not really “undocumented” illegal in the real world sense at all. They moved from Pennsylvania to Indiana and didn’t update their stuff at the local DMV because they would get flagged by the cops for fleeing a crime scene. They didn’t move from Venezuela to Indiana and ignore the green card process because they had to find a below minimum-wage job.

Good to know you have TDS.

It is a “political” show in that it explores what authoritarian governments can be like, in a way that isn’t just applicable to a 1930s German political party. It can also be broadly applied to anyone who abuses power, and to the Foucault-like nature of modern life structured around disciplinary institutions and prisons. This is why it’s widely appreciated and not seen as “political” in the sense of being propaganda purely aimed at people living in the 2020s. Whether centered around Orange Man or any other issues.

However like I said before there is an exception to this now, with the illegal undocumented immigrants parts. For me it has a pass for now but that’s strike one.

NFBisms said:

Vladius said:
NFB I don’t know what you mean by “Star Wars’ history with SA”.

just all the sex slavery. I think the biggest offenders are the cartoons playing it coy about that being what’s going on when women are bought and sold at auctions. It’s treated very callously, like a fact of the universe - but doesn’t even center on the ugly traumatic experience of the victims like it is here. It’s just always been there because it was there at Jabba’s Palace so it’s “Star Wars”-y enough to be included. Twilek women portrayal in general was in an odd, skeevy place pop culturally until the late 2010s, and it seeps into how they were portrayed throughout Star Wars media up to that point. But even Rebels falls into making comedic light of Hera being bought and sold for ~reasons~.

At least Jabba is only shown forcibly licking and killing a Twilek slave so that he can get comeuppance later (like the Imperial in Andor). Filoni still wants you to think Death Watch is an honorable and cool warrior culture after showing them take concubines post-village sacking.

That’s true. I guess people think about it as a separate category because twi’leks are specifically colorful aliens and you don’t see people actively trying to rape them. People in and out of universe do love sexy twi’leks, especially George Lucas. (The only two characters he wanted to import from the EU lol)

It’s fine. It wasn’t made to be titillating in any way. The most kid unfriendly part of it is the two bludgeoning each other over the head until the officer has brain damage and dies.

NFB I don’t know what you mean by “Star Wars’ history with SA”.

yoshif8tures said:

Patali said:

Farm planet, boring, it’s gone.

Yavin 4, insufferable characters that are never once made relatable. It’s gone.

Mon Mothma plot, heavily, heavily trimmed.

Syril and Dedra… pretty good plot actually. Did not take up too much run time, scenes were punchy.

Agreed. Farm planet was a drag and didn’t really add much, most of it can be cut. Mon rave scene can be trimmed as well as endless chitchat about marriage problems which is irrelevant.
Yavin rebels were insufferable and I was hoping Cassian would put them out of their misery as he took flight.
i would also cut the pep talk he had with the imperial tech before he stole the fighter since it didn’t really add anything important. Also cut the imps showing a retro video since it was too on the nose n@zi. Yes we know the imps are space versions, but flat out copying them is just too earthy for me.

The retro video wasn’t a nazi thing. It was more like a 40s/50s American video and it was focused on tourism. It was a little bit earthy though.

I thought everything was really tastefully done including the one scene with Bix, except for the over the top references to undocumented illegal alien farm workers. I get that that kind of thing could happen because the Empire is full of oppressive busybodies who love getting people in trouble for paperwork, but I think the implication that that’s an analogous situation to the US is kind of crass.

Anchorhead said:

Omni said:

Maybe Cassian should’ve spent more time in the main story as opposed to lost in a side quest on Yavin for a couple episodes…

Which is exactly why I have the same problem with this season as I had with season one. WAY too much time spent doing nothing. We spent two episodes in S1 building stick & mud models of the ship hanger and two more episodes building parts of the Death Star (come on, we all new immediately that’s what they were building). This season we’ve already spent two episodes watching knuckleheads stranded in the jungle argue and play rock-paper-scissors.

And don’t get me started on the episode wasted on watching the young couple Baroque dancing for 20 minutes. WTF? The saving grace is that many of those scenes had Genevieve O’Reilly, who I find gorgeous. That said, I could have done without 10 minutes of her at a rave.

I thought the story and scenes on Mina-Rau to be the most engaging so far. Interesting side story that fits in Star Wars universe. I’ll keep watching, but three episodes in I already feel like I did three quarters of the way through season one.

I think you just have to get used to the idea that not everything is going somewhere or building to anything. Sometimes it’s supposed to just be fluff about human behavior or something.

timdiggerm said:

This thread has maybe gone off topic

It’s a topic related to the Chosen One concept in the prequels.

And does it really matter? Barely anyone posts on this forum.

Channel72 said:

Vladius said:

Channel72 said:

Vladius said:

Channel72 said:

Vladius said:

Channel72 said:

I hate Messianic prophecies in general, or the very idea of a Messiah, because it encourages the idea that all hope for the future is dependent on one dude, instead of like, the group effort that is required in real life.

Granted, Star Wars doesn’t incorporate a true Messiah into the mythology. Vader is more like a very round-about Messiah who only saves the Universe after he fucks over the entire Universe. So it’s at least a twist on the idea of a Messiah, kind of like Dune. But I still don’t like it, because it shrinks the Universe by elevating one guy to cosmic significance. At one point, Luke was just a random farmboy and Vader was just a cyborg SS officer carrying out the will of his government. There was a backstory intertwining the two of them, but it was personal, not a matter of cosmic importance.

Nothing is really a “true Messiah” because the Messiah is from Judaism, and (except for Messianic Jews) believe that the Messiah hasn’t come yet. The actual Messiah according to Christianity was of course Jesus Christ, who was a perfect being and the only possible person who could save humanity from sin and death. Jesus specifically rejected the people who wanted him to be like the conquering hero Messiah we have in fiction. He repeatedly told everyone to repent and get their own lives in order, and didn’t fulfill their fantasies of overthrowing the Romans or making himself king in a mortal sense.

There aren’t any messiahs, chosen ones, etc. in fiction who are anything close to that. It’s just a phrase people throw around like destiny or prophecy. The concept has a very specific real world context that often gets tossed out the window.

I mean, I think most people would interpret the word “Messiah” simply to refer generically to the idea of a “Chosen One” who is prophesied to appear at some designated time and play a pivotal role in overthrowing an oppressor. The Jewish concept in the OT (Old Testament, not Original Trilogy 😉) is the origin of the idea, yes, and is also a straightforward implementation of the concept, even though mainstream Judaism teaches the Messiah’s coming is a future event. The concept obviously morphed over the years, going from a prophesied savior from the Romans in the first century modeled after the O.G. King David (with various historical claimants appearing in the first century and failing badly) to various Rabbinical reinterpretations over the years.

The Christian Messiah is a Rian Johnson style “twist” on the original Jewish Messiah concept. Paul of Tarsus was like: “Oh, you thought your Messiah would come and overthrow the Romans with his laser sword? Try again, idiots. Instead, your Messiah will appear briefly and provide free healthcare to a few random people, deliver some cool parables and magic tricks, then get arrested and killed, but then rise from the grave, thus recontextualizing all Old Testament Messianic prophecy as part of an eschatological continuum beginning with Original Sin and culminating in a “second coming” event, where the Messiah will return upgraded with new super-powers and kick lots of ass, rather than a boring Maccabee-style Jewish Warrior King who implausibly defeats Tiberius Caesar. Expectations subverted.”

If you are a Christian, it isn’t a twist on the concept. It’s the original concept that the Jews didn’t understand because they weren’t really paying attention to the prophecies.

Yeah, I understand that. Stuff like Isaiah 53 and all that. I wouldn’t say the Jews weren’t paying attention - I mean, the Rabbis analyzed all this stuff for a living for thousands of years. They just interpreted most of the Messianic prophecies as referring to the nation of Israel collectively, or to an unknown future descendant of David, rather than the specific Messiah from Nazareth named Jesus/Yeshua. The Jewish interpretation is at least more straightforward in the sense that it assumes a straightforward political coup/revolution and doesn’t require the Messiah to first die, rise from the dead, then come back to finish the job after an indeterminate number of centuries (and also doesn’t associate the Messiah with an entirely new covenant doing away with the old Laws or at least “spiritualizing” their interpretation - although some Biblical prophecies hint at this). On the other hand, the Jewish interpretation arguably doesn’t handle certain Biblical prophecies as well, mostly the ones presumably describing a Messianic figure as somebody who is meek and must suffer for the sins of Israel.

Anyway, in popular culture, a Messiah is a way more flexible concept and usually reduces to a generic “Chosen One” like in the Matrix or Harry Potter.

The professional rabbis didn’t exist until after the return from Babylon around 500 BC. Before that there were actual prophets, and Jesus refers to them murdering a prophet named Zacharias some time in the interim before the New Testament.

Yeah but those professional rabbis had already been around for centuries by the time Jesus lived, so presumably they already had fairly well-developed ideas about how to identify the Messiah when he finally arrives. Although, obviously, there were different schools of thought (Pharisee vs. Sadducee vs. Essene, etc.) about all this. According to the Book of Acts, a high-ranking Sanhedrin member even entertained the possibility that Jesus was actually legitimately the Messiah.

But arguably, the very idea of a Messiah would be mostly meaningless until at least the 6th century BC when the inhabitants of Judea were conquered and exiled to Babylon and thereafter forced to live under foreign rule. Until that point, the nation of Israel (or at least the Southernmost two tribes) had been independent for centuries, so there would be nothing to be “saved from” that would cause the idea of a Messiah to emerge.

That’s why they call it a Chosen One and not a Messiah. Messiah is a very particular cultural concept and really the only other big place you would find it is in Dune. Dune also plays fast and loose with various other religious concepts, mainly from Islam, but it’s done well and it makes sense given that it’s a mishmash of cultural elements they inherited from 10,000 years of human history.

IIRC, the actual original meaning of Messiah was just any King, any “anointed one” literally, and was used in the Old Testament to refer to “ordinary” historical kings like David’s friend-turned-enemy Saul, and even to refer to some pagan rulers like Cyrus the Great. Come to think of it, I don’t remember off hand if any of the Old Testament prophecies actually even use the word “Messiah” - but I haven’t studied this stuff for a while, so I might be wrong. I remember at least that some of the more obviously Messianic prophecies (in the books of Ezekiel, Daniel, etc.) used more obscure terminology like “Son of Man” (also a later epithet for Jesus which likely just meant something like “a normal human” in Hebrew) to refer to the Messiah - but the gist of all these prophecies was basically “your life sucks now because a foreign power rules over you, and it’s your fault because you worshiped Baal and other pagan gods, but don’t worry because some day you’ll return home and your country and way of life will be restored”.

Fast forward to the 1st century AD when Jesus lived, and it seems the Pharisees (and also Jesus’ own disciples) had some pretty well-developed ideas about what a Jewish Messiah should bring to the table, and presumably it involved (at the very least) overthrowing the Roman occupation in Judea. They even already had a historical model to base this on: the model of Judas and Simon Maccabee who successfully overthrew a previous occupying foreign imperial power and gained independence for Israel about 200 years before Jesus was born.

Okay but you said “thousands of years,” which is different from a few centuries. Everything they came up with was based on prophecies, like Isaiah’s. Most of those prophecies also tell Israel that they’re going to get wrecked by foreign powers and have to repent and return, so the Messiah would not be “meaningless” just because it hasn’t happened yet. You also mentioned the southernmost two tribes were still there like the loss of 10 tribes and the entire northern kingdom to Assyria isn’t a massive deal.

I don’t know that the exact word is used in the Old Testament that we have, but it is in the apocrypha and the Dead Sea Scrolls. The concept is clearly there though.

You don’t need to tell me about all this stuff, I already know. I’m not trying to be vain or anything but you’re just repeating what I’ve already said in different words. Messiah was a Jewish cultural idea, there were different interpretations of what it meant, and if you’re Christian you hold that some of those interpretations were incorrect or incomplete.

Messiah was not intended to be a general Chosen One sort of character category to be dropped into media hundreds of years later, so your original criticism that it’s all about one guy saving everyone with no one else taking any effort doesn’t make sense. If the messiah was a political messiah coming to free people from the Romans, they would still need to take part in the revolution, and if the messiah was a spiritual leader or some mixture of both, people would still need to repent and get their act together.

I’m happy they somehow picked the best one, that was unexpected